the hidden driver of token performance

Welcome to our institutional newsletter, Crypto Long & Short. This week:

• Jordan Brewer on the missing piece in token markets: institutional-grade investor relations.
• Martin Burgherr on crypto markets maturing, becoming more efficient and lower risk for institutions.
• Top headlines institutions should pay attention to by Francisco Rodrigues.
• Collector Crypt: revenue recovery meets token re-rating in Chart of the Week.

-Alexandra Levis

Expert Insights

Guide, deliver, repeat: the hidden driver of token performance

By Jordan Brewer, investment analyst, Runa Digital Assets

In early March, just three months after a Solana Breakpoint mainstage appearance by Ranger Finance co-founder Fathur Rahman, and two months post-ICO, tokenholders forced the liquidation of the protocol’s treasury. How does a 14x oversubscribed ICO unravel so quickly? The answer: poor investor relations.

Institutional-grade investor relations remains the missing piece in token markets. Crypto has spent years in a venture-style framework, but protocols now seek public market investors to provide more durable capital. A key part of investor relations is a regular investor call where management walks through forward guidance — teams at Maple Finance and EtherFi are leading here. These calls are solid, but this is just the start, and the stakes are high. Done well, token valuations are rewarded; done poorly, the downside is steep.

It pays to give guidance (as long as you beat it)

Research shows the value of forward guidance isn’t just in providing it, it’s in its accuracy. Bartov, Givoly, and Hayn (2002) found that firms that consistently meet or beat their own guidance enjoy a measurable stock price premium over firms that don’t. This premium compounds for “habitual beaters,” meaning the market increasingly trusts and rewards management teams that repeatedly deliver. Additionally, beating guidance is a leading indicator of future stock performance, regardless of whether the beat was genuine or a result of earnings or expectations management. Skinner and Sloan (2002) also demonstrated the inverse: growth stocks that disappoint on earnings expectations experience an asymmetrically large negative price response, far exceeding the upside reward of a positive surprise. Guidance accuracy is a proxy for management credibility, and credibility is a direct input to valuation multiples.

Crypto is beginning to produce its own version of this dynamic. In December 2024, when Maple’s AUM was $460 million and their ARR was $4 million, Maple set guidance of $4 billion in AUM and $25 million in ARR for 2025 and later raised guidance to $5 billion in AUM and $30 million in ARR. Maple delivered, hitting $5 billion in AUM and $28 million in 30 day annualized revenue in October (see table below). That’s a guide-and-deliver cadence that any public market investor would recognize and reward. From December 2024 to June 2025, the SYRUP token price rose from $0.10 to a high of $0.60, outperforming competitors like AAVE by 475%.

EtherFi is a good example of this dynamic. On their March 2026 tokenholder call, the team projected a 55% reduction in customer acquisition cost while raising their advertising budget 420% throughout 2026, which would imply 11x year over year customer growth. That’s the kind of specific guidance that gives investors something concrete to hold them to.

However, guidance without delivery is just marketing. Investor relations in crypto doesn’t end with a dashboard, that’s where it starts. Guidance and accountability are at the heart of credibility for protocol teams, and it is credibility that builds conviction in public investors.

Principled Perspectives

Institutions are separating custody from execution in crypto

By Martin Burgherr, chief clients officer, Sygnum Bank

There is a quiet but significant shift underway in how institutional capital moves through crypto markets. Major trading firms are increasingly separating where they hold assets from where they execute trades. More than a tactical change, it signals a broader evolution in digital asset market structure.

For most of crypto’s institutional history, there has been a basic architectural assumption: to access liquidity, you keep capital on the exchange. Historically, if you want to trade on an on-chain options exchange or run strategies across multiple venues, you wire the collateral to each exchange and leave it there. The model works, until you ask what it costs.

That cost is not just counterparty risk, though that matters too. It is capital inefficiency. Every dollar posted as margin on an exchange sits idle, earns nothing and cannot be redeployed. For an institutional trading desk managing hundreds of millions in positions, the opportunity cost is enormous — and in a rising-rate environment, it is getting harder to justify.

The infrastructure is catching up

The separation of custody and execution is not theoretical. Firms including Wintermute and Nomura’s digital asset arm Laser Digital are already operating this way, using collateral held in regulated bank custody while maintaining full access to exchange liquidity. BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized money market fund, which sits at roughly $2.5 billion AUM, is now accepted as off-exchange collateral. The infrastructure is not being built by startups. It is being built by the institutions that intend to use it.

When collateral moves into regulated custody, it can take a different form. U.S. Treasuries or tokenized money market fund shares can serve as trading collateral while earning yield. The collateral does not just sit in a vault — it remains productive while still backing trading activity. Capital that previously sat inert can now generate returns, reducing the effective cost of maintaining trading positions. This is not a marginal efficiency gain. It fundamentally changes the economics of running an institutional crypto trading operation.

A maturing market structure

Crypto is beginning to follow a familiar pattern. Traditional finance solved this problem long ago — equities trade on exchanges, assets settle through custodians. The two functions live in different places, governed by different entities. That separation is what makes institutional participation possible at scale.

According to EY-Parthenon’s 2026 institutional investor survey, 73% of institutional investors plan to increase their digital asset allocations this year, with respondents getting more selective about counterparty risk. The infrastructure is scaling to meet them. The migration is already underway.

Headlines of the Week

By Francisco Rodrigues

This week’s headlines highlight that while the bridges between traditional finance and the crypto sector keep on growing, the devastation caused by smart contract exploits is hitting the market.

• U.S. military runs a Bitcoin node, sees crypto as ‘power projection’ vs China: Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress that INDOPACOM is operating a live node on the Bitcoin network for cybersecurity testing and views the protocol as a tool of American power projection against China.
• Aave raises nearly 80% of the $200 million it needs to cover bad debt left by Kelp DAO exploit: The DeFi United recovery initiative has gathered roughly $160 million of the $200 million needed to recapitalize rsETH and erase the bad debt, with Mantle and the Aave DAO supplying 55,000 ETH, around $127 million, of the total.
• More than 100 crypto firms urge Senate to move on U.S. market structure bill: A coalition including Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm wrote to the Senate Banking Committee pressing for a markup of the Clarity Act, warning that without a federal crypto framework, investment and jobs will move offshore to jurisdictions like the EU that already have one.
• JPMorgan says persistent security flaws curb DeFi’s institutional appeal: Wall Street’s largest bank told clients that repeated bridge and infrastructure exploits, headlined by the KelpDAO attack that wiped roughly $20 billion in TVL within days, and flat ETH-denominated growth are pushing capital toward Tether’s USDT and keeping institutions on the sidelines.
• EU’s largest measures against Russia yet include escalation of crypto sanctions evasion: Brussels’ 20th sanctions package imposes a sectoral ban on all Russia-based crypto service providers and DeFi platforms, prohibits transactions in the digital ruble and the RUBx stablecoin, and designates the Kyrgyz exchange TengriCoin, the first time a third-country VASP has been hit for facilitating the Garantex–Grinex–A7A5 evasion network.

Chart of the Week

Collector Crypt: revenue recovery meets token re-rating

After peaking in September 2025, Collector Crypt’s weekly revenue pulled back sharply before grinding back to ~$1 million/week since March — with the CEO’s revenue-funded buyback programme providing a mechanical bid under CARDS throughout the recovery. The recent price spike was then turbo-charged by a community update on April 24 claiming $146.9 million Q1 revenue and $8.6 million profit, though the token remains 73% below its all-time high.

Listen. Read. Watch. Engage.

• Listen: Did you hear? Consensus Miami is heating up. Recently added speakers include: U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, U.S. Senator Ashley Moody, and Donald Trump Jr., Co-Founder, World Liberty Financial. Grab 20% off your ticket today!
• Read: In Crypto for Advisors, Vincent Chok from First Digital unpacks the rise of “agentic finance,” where #AI agents are moving beyond advice to execute financial transactions.
• Watch: CoinDesk’s Public Keys from NYSE with host Jennifer Sanasie. Brett W. Redfearn, President of Securitize, joins to discuss the $30 billion in tokenized assets on chain, Michael Reinking from NYSE gives a digital assets macro outlook, and AVAX One CEO Jolie Kahn explains a treasury strategy around Avalanche.
• Engage: David LaValle will be speaking at June’s ICI Conference in Nashville. Let’s connect onsite! 

Looking for more? Receive the latest crypto news from coindesk.com and market updates from coindesk.com/institutions.

Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc., CoinDesk Indices or its owners and affiliates.